Severity of Psychopathy in a Community-Recruited Sample is Indexed by Increased Social Discounting

Psychopathy is a personality construct characterized by boldness, disinhibition, insensitivity to others’ suffering or distress, and persistent engagement in behaviors that harm others. These combined features suggest highly psychopathic people may place much less subjective weight on others’ outcomes relative to their own. We therefore assessed social discounting, which indexes how the subjective value of others’ outcomes declines as a function of social distance, in a novel, demographically diverse community sample of very-high psychopathy adults ( n  = 288), as well as a sample of demographically similar controls ( n  = 427), who also reported antisocial and criminal behavior. Results show robust increases in social discounting as psychopathy increases, and that reduced subjective valuation of others’ outcomes partially mediates the group differences in antisocial behavior. These insights emphasize the importance of understanding how psychopathic traits manifest in the community and highlight the need for interventions aimed at increasing how others’ outcomes are valued.